EP 4: Long Range Hunting & Precision Shooting with Todd Sholly

kill a freaking stud heavy big ol eye garden and the wind was just if the wind was blowing so hard there were pine cones just shooting across the canyon it's critical that that guns level so you can hold the right wind anything to do with western big game welcome to the epic outdoors podcast powered by underarmor hey everybody jason carter here with the epic outdoors podcast uh powered by underarmor in these episodes we sit down with some of the leaders in the hunting industry and extract valuable information ideas that will help you become more educated and a successful hunter today we've got a special guest we've got todd shawley of red rock precision he's an awesome guy i've known him for a lot of years and they produce some of the finest rifles we've ever seen we've used them quite extensively adam bronson within the epic outdoors team has used

them with all of his clients and a lot of his personal kills and and they're killing everything from from zero to a thousand yards with them and could probably even do further if if he wanted to so nothing but respect for these guys known them for a long long time they're very serious hunters they live here in utah which maybe i'm a little bit biased but when you make good products you make good products so anyway welcome todd good to be here thank you you betcha we really appreciate you spending a little time with us and our listeners so give us a little bit of your history and a little bit of background well i uh you know grew up in a little town of uena at the mouth weaver canyon there and uh lived there my whole entire life i still live there and uh it was a small little farming community and i was able to go out and trap and hunt and do all those things just as a young boy and

and uh it's a little different now but that's it's a little different where i grew up and what i what i did awesome and so give me a little bit of your hunting background or or what you did just you know prior to you know to working and developing red rock well you know my dad introduced me to hunting at a young age and uh you know we went down to beaver every year and he always bow hunted and i tagged along and yeah and so uh you know that's just kind of what i've done and and over the years i've just kind of done my own thing he passed away at a young age and uh so just have been hunting with my boys and and doing things with them and uh that's what i do so uh in regards to the rifles have you always been a gun nut was it something you just kind of became interested in long range and needed better equipment or or how did this evolve you know i was an archery guy at first i mean that's

all i did was bow hunt for you know from from the time i was married at 20 to about 27 28 years old all i did was archery hunt that's all i did i i i would shoot my bow every morning and every night before i went to work and and uh i don't know if i got tired of that but i just wanted to change yeah and kurt my partner he kind of moved into my neighborhood and he liked to shoot guns and i like to shoot guns and uh kind of how we got introduced to this and we started going every saturday we'd take our guns and we'd go out to over by woodruff and we'd set up our own targets and we'd just we'd just shoot and that's kind of how it started and so you guys developed a strong friendship we did yeah and then just is he what what are some of his talents did he was he did he bring some of the you know different manufacturing pieces together or how did this how did this evolve

yeah you know we were both a lot the same you know he loved to hunt he loved guns and i loved guns and and uh kurt's really good with numbers that's that's what he's really good at he's uh you know he's our machinist and he's he's very very technical guy well i know when i've got a new gun coming from you guys and uh can't wait to get it of course i'm a fan of new guns i just can't can't get my hands on enough guns but uh he he went over things with me and said you know i'm personally building this rifle and and i think that's what you guys do is you guys handle each gun specifically you know we we only build 150 guns a year yeah but the 150 guns that we build they're perfect yeah they don't go out you know i mean some of these some of these guys are building five six hundred a thousand rifles a

year that's absolutely right so um tell us about the early days of red rock like how have things changed since you since you started this you remember i remember i was in your basement or his basement i can't even remember which basement he was in his basement but what i remember is the first the first time we came down to cedar city we brought those guns down yes you remember that yeah i totally remember and and i knew you guys weren't impressed with those guns i mean they shot good you know but no they shot awesome but they were heavy they were heavy and not that you can't pack a few extra pounds but for some reason i mean to throw a little more weight in my backpack no you know doesn't seem like a lot but when you're actually holding a gun down to your side and it's you know 10 or 11 pounds

versus seven it's quite a difference absolutely no and we you know we we listened to you guys yeah and you told us your thoughts and yeah instead of taking that personal we we changed yeah you saw our guns in our booth they're amazing they're totally different they're made seven and a half pounds with the scope yeah yeah amazing rifles so you know instead of being stubborn or you know saying hey we don't want anything to do with it and we we did what what the people want yeah and and guys want a lighter rifle they want a good rifle but they want a lighter and so you would say like that's the major change you've seen is is a we had this product and then we've adapted and building products that people want now there's still somebody that wants that 10 or 11 pound rifle a bench rest shooter there is

somebody that's not concerned about weight and i like a heavy rifle i do like sitting behind a 10 or 11 12 pound gun it's something about it and uh you feel like it you feel like it's more accurate you just feel solid well they are i mean you know and guys will ask us why why a heavy gun i mean and if you watch the show american sniper chris chris kyle that guns that guns 23 pounds you know what i mean but there's a reason why it's 23 pounds yeah you know the heavier guns are usually more accurate but you can still have a lightweight right you know a seven and a half pound rifle that that shoots really really good yeah and so what uh what would you say are red rock strengths like what what do you guys specialize in what why should why would somebody choose a red rock over something else what we do is totally different than everybody else when when we build a rifle specific for a guy

the ammunition specific for that rifle so that guy that guy is getting his own ammunition with his gun so we'll take that rifle out we'll break it in and then we work up a load specific for that gun and we fine-tune it to get it to where we want it yeah and we just we just keep track of that that serial number and the guy's name and guys call us up every day all week just saying this is so and so my serial number this and yeah we load them up ammo and send it yes you know i do like that you know a lot of companies don't want to deal with building ammo i don't know if there's some legal things with it or some liability but but a lot of companies want to give the rifle and then not ever see it again yeah or you know some of these bigger companies that are selling a lot of rifles they they ship out the same ammo with

every single gun so so obviously you know if you got 10 guns one of those one of those 10 is going to shoot better than the other nine yes it's just just going to happen but if you worked up a load with each specific gun and that and that gun had its own recipe maybe all 10 could shoot the same absolutely that's that's your point for sure okay all right awesome well um in in your opinion you know and you've dealt with this a lot i don't know anybody that would deal with it more than you and your partner obviously but um you know what are the most important factors in accurate shooting like what are some of the most important factors that that affect uh the accuracy of long range shooting well you know you gotta have you gotta have an accurate rifle to start with and it's like anything else you got to

practice yeah you know but as far as components you know your stock and your barrel and all those things all that goes into that it factors into that so it's and guys just need to practice yeah you know you know i i think you're 100 right they do they do need to practice but but you know one one of the things i've found with taking clients over the years and and whatnot is is they just don't pay attention to the little things it's one thing to go out and have a lead sled or have all these sandbags and different things but when you're in the field you don't have that and so what i try to do is like take a harris bipod which is which is my favorite i don't know and you you might be able to enlighten us because you've done a lot i know there's a lot of bipods out there but but i'm using a harris and uh and is

to support the front and to support the back so you know it's one thing to support the front and then snuggle in on it and not have support but you're bringing it into your shoulder it's another thing to put a backpack or something under the back too you know as if you were at the range yeah and then bring it into your shoulder and just be really tight with it and be solid so if you were to let go of it it would still be on your target right i find you know and i don't know you know about you guys and and i know you've dealt with a lot of different shooters coming through the course and shooting your range and whatnot but but i find that to be you know making sure the gun's level to go through all these steps and it's just kind of it needs to become natural it's one thing to you know pull the

trigger a thousand times but it's another thing to think okay i've got the gun in the front supported the back supported it's level it's into my shoulder it's level i check that two or three times and then just squeeze it and and maybe the level you know is is more important on a reticle where you know at the bottom of the scope that if it's tilled can't can one side or the other your shot's going to be off a lot more you know where were that if you don't have the gun level where that will really hurt you is if you know let's say you're going to take an 800 yard shot at an antelope or something out in the desert and the wind's blowing 10 miles an hour it's critical that that gun's level so you can hold the right wind that that's where guys they don't even think about those things yeah they don't even

think about it and when you're out antelope hunting i mean there's wind there's like southern wyoming i mean you know wherever there's a you know you're going to find wind out in that wide open country so anyway well i know you guys have done a great job i've i've experienced your your facilities and and seeing what you guys do and the care that you put into it and i know you know i mean there's just nobody better in our industry for what we're doing but um how do you feel a hunter can be more prepared to make a shot under pressure whether it's a technical shot or a quick high pressure moment like what do you think a guy could do to well you know what at the gun range we used to shoot at uh i would see guys about i don't know the first of september all of a sudden guys would start showing

up to the range and they're setting up their guns on the benches and they would sight their guns in and then they'd say well i'm ready to go you know that was it they just sighted them in at the range you know you got to go out you know me and kurt we'll go out we'll get in the mountains we'll we'll shoot downhill we'll shoot uphill it's one thing to shoot off of a real sturdy cement bench with a nice rest you got to get out in hunting situations and lay down and shoot prone and and do all those things you know what i felt has helped me over the years it's just shooting a lot of coyotes i know it doesn't yeah or shooting at them you know not a lot of people yeah i mean it's tough to kill a coyote they do have a you know a small body under all that fur but but um just getting out of the truck getting down on the ground and making a shot wherever the coyote is you got to range him

quick or whatever and go ahead and use your 30 caliber rifle to do that like absolutely that's practice you know what i mean and just being out in the hills and and and doing that and maybe even a jackrabbit at 400 yards or 300 or whatever but just just just that little bit of practice it's a lot of practice there's a lot more going into it than a guy might think anyway tell what do you think what's your opinion like turrets versus radicals i know and i'm of the opinion every system works there there is every system does work but uh from what i found but like there's pluses and minuses and and just wanted kind of your opinion on that and then what what you guys like well we we use the turret system you know i mean it's you know if you look at your military you know they everything they use is clicks moa you know and that's that's really the most precise you can get

but there's guys like you you like the reticle system then the holdover and you practice with that and you're efficient with it so my opinion on that is it's it's whatever you practice with and what you're comfortable with yeah and i and i agree with you what i've had some guys have said well i'm not sure i like the the uh turrets because you know it's mechanical mechanical things fail and right and you have some scopes that don't have the stop or whatever so you end up rolling it over and i've seen that happen a lot and it'll affect somebody you know on a 30 inch buck it would crush me it happened to my son last year in in wyoming i had it i had it on zero but it was around once geez and how do you stop how do you how do you avoid that is there is there certain scopes that won't let you do that tell me about that no they'll all do that you just you it was just it was my fault it

was my rifle so it but it was all my fault you know and he's he's shooting and this deer's not even moving you know and it's 185 inch deer it's it's last day in wyoming it's a snow storm and and uh deer runs off and i grab the gun and i wind it and i wind it again he was probably shooting 20 30 feet over that deer so it was dad's fault you know well geez i don't know if i could get over that on a 200 inch deer i just want to shoot myself i know it yeah geez yeah no it was that can happen but you know what else can happen and i found this in uh with the reticles is the the reticles come in at different yardages depending on the power and so you know like when you're when you're in tight situations i turn the power down and and you know if we're going through especially after we've shot a buck and we're going up to him i turn the power down but but you forget to turn that power back

up if you ever turn it down or it gets but i did that i've done that before too and i did that in the early years did that same thing yeah and your yardage is off and you're gonna miss the deer so there's a little there's plus and minuses on both of them i found too you know the reticles are different depending on the speed of the bullet and the ballistic coefficient and the weight and all of these factors and so you know you'll run your computer program and i by usually i've used to like say i'm using a swarovski scope they've got an app and then i'll screenshot the app put it on my screen shaver put it on my lock screen and that's the you know that is the particular yardage for that reticle at the certain elevation and i'm guessing an average temperature you know what i mean yeah so it's like you said it's not an exact science like like you could you could be a lot more or a slight more

exacting on a reticle and i totally understand that where where the holdover has its weakness and and you i don't shoot one so you tell me but where where we see guys really struggle with those is i i was with a guy that was shooting at a deer in colorado and it was like 39 degrees uphill yeah and it and he was way way off he was just holding with that yeah so i don't know how you calculate a lot of it is just uh well you know for me it's those angle compensating rangefinders yeah you know what i mean and then two and i'm old school but so and it's kind of odd but but i have an app on my phone with the level it's a level app yeah and i'll run it down the barrel and that'll tell me a 15 degree angle 20 degree angle and i've got an angle chart taped to my scope in the in the in the event that uh you know something failed on my rangefinder or whatnot but but you're right i mean

you're shooting up or downhill you know either way you're gonna have a different yardage and you need to know that yardage you do whether you're dialing or or or you've got reticles you know what i mean yeah i do and so anyway both all systems work you know they do work i i have used in the past like the zeiss rapid z800 reticle and i'll actually you know hope that it's accurate but i but i will run a ballistic and match that bullet speed like a 180 acubon going 3100 feet a second 30 caliber comes in perfect on 5000 feet in elevation all of those reticles match up perfectly all the way down to eight so eight's 800 and then it's got quarter hashes well that's good for my kids so they're shooting 500 yards hey you know use the five you know what i mean i do but i'm gonna use i'm gonna use the turrets i'm gonna i'm gonna work on the turrets i it'd be nice for clients myself and

kids to dial have you know basically use one main crosshair right and know that it's ready you know and and it can be a little more exacting so i'm kind of excited to get into that i've just had a little bit of an issue with the size of the turret you know and they're hanging up on your pack and they dial and mess you know what i mean yeah we hear that all the time and so maybe do they do they make small you know low profile like the swarovski was talking about it's a low profile turret yeah so and you know the scopes you know like the night force that's a really big bulky turret turret yes and uh you know the huskama that we use it it's not real big it's a three-quarter inch turret you know so but you know and the other thing that that we hear that you know guys might want to know is we've had guys put those guns in in scabbards and stuff with horses and there's been some problems

with that that makes it a little bit of a problem yeah it does well and so how when a guy comes to you um will you use any scope or do you know you probably like the huskama you deal in the huskama but if you wanted a swarovski what would you would you do it absolutely we do it all the time okay you know me and you talked about that yesterday so it's what we want the customer to have what they want okay you know and if a guy we've had guys that want to put a vortex on or a zeiss and you're fine with that yeah absolutely do you so having said that there's probably some scopes you feel like are maybe slightly more accurate than others and you don't have to mention it on here but it you know it is a reflection on maybe your gun so like let's say let's say you threw a the cheapest you know a simmons on there or something and you were shooting 800 yards it might

you might gasp a little bit because you don't want it to be a reflection on your gun it's probably not going to work okay you know that let's just be honest yeah be honest yeah for sure and so yeah i think i mean even though you will use everything you do make recommendations yeah i just think if a guy's going to spend six or seven or eight thousand dollars on a gun yeah he's not going to put a cheap scope on i understand you know what i mean so so we but you you probably hear of everything you've heard i've heard it all yeah tell me about these new calibers like i have i have no knowledge i know the 28 nozzle and some of the different calibers that are coming out i've always shot a well i went from a 300 weatherbee to a 300 ultra mag and and you know i like 22 250 i mean there's a few basics that are in my closet but i mean tell me about these new calibers and and what you're finding

accuracy wise and effectiveness wise god the effect the effectiveness on on both the 28 and the 30 nozzle is incredible just the videos and the pictures and the stories from the guys the 30 nozzle it's just a really really accurate caliber i remember the first one that we chambered and we did that was probably about a year ago the guys at nosler sent us a reamer and you know we're good friends with those guys but we built one and it didn't matter what bullet or what powder i use that gun shot good wow it just it's just one of those one of those rounds what's give me the layman's terms what's the difference between a 38 nozzle and 300 ultramag like what what is it the 30 nozzle versus the 300 ultramag well you know that 300 ultramag is just a bigger case and that's what i shoot i think that's what you that's what i'm

you know it's just a it's a longer case they don't feed quite as good you know in the heat of the moment but uh speed wise speed wise the 300 ultramag is faster is it it is yeah it's quite a bit but you know you're you're shooting 93 94 grains of rotumbo out of that 300 ultramag versus you know 80 grains of another powder really yeah and less recoil with that 30 really but it's just it's a really really accurate round so um in saying all that is it something like how is the energy down range are we have enough energy plenty for elk i mean oh yeah yeah are we talking 2900 feet a second like what's a nozzle yeah the 30 nozzle you know whether it's a 210 or a 190 they're around 3000 feet okay somewhere right there so it's it's it's right there what's interesting though there was this fad maybe

what do you think five years ago about speed was king and oh yeah you know so when you came out with a wildcat cartridge or a new cartridge it was always faster and better and bigger yeah you know what i mean like shooting a 180 going 3700 now we come out with a new cartridge that's shooting a little slower a slow hit's better than a fast mist right yeah oh yeah i'd say yeah for sure so it's just all about accuracy you know like we've talked about the holdover reticles and the turrets whether it's slow or fast that'll get it there yeah it will you know and i think too you know and like we talked a little bit about yesterday is is um you know whether you're let's say a bullet's dropping 160 inches at 900 yards or something i mean or or he's dropping 143 inches like what's the difference we're gonna have

to compensate a lot of inches yeah so just a few more inches if it's a more accurate round it's a little bit slower it's not that big of the deal it's not a big deal yeah it's all about accuracy yeah it's everything yeah well um how i don't know if you want to get into the components of your rifle i notice i like the look of your brake on there i mean is there pluses and minuses you know to different brakes out there accuracy wise noise wise a muzzle brakes a muzzle brake they're all noisy you know but what i've noticed is when you're out hunting and you've got a 200 inch deer out there the last thing you're thinking is oh this is going to hurt my ears right yeah you just shoot you just shoot you just shoot i know and i never really noticed that after i've got bad hearing in my left ear right now really bad in fact i would miss college tests and whatnot and you know because

i was laying on one ear and my alarm would be going off in the other i'm lucky i even made it through college but anyway um but my point nowadays is you know i try to use hearing protection but when i'm in the field i just know that there's going to be five or six rounds or maybe hopefully more if there's you know we've got more tags but uh that i'm just going to take it in the ears you know what i mean so to speak it's not a big deal it's one of those things you're going to give up a little bit to make sure that um you can hear the people around you you can hear your surroundings and all that so what can people do to become more prepared more prepared in the field is it just you know becoming like you get a guy that comes in and gets a rifle i mean a lot of these guys you know haven't had the for good

fortune to hunt like you and i have kill coyotes every day go out and have guns in their trucks i mean they might live in the city they might live back east like yeah you know in my opinion they need to become familiar with the with rifles in general plus your rifle yeah well that's that's one thing thing that we offer every guy that buys a rifle from us we invite him to come and pick it up we have guys from all over the united states all year long yeah and the reason we invite them is so they know how to use it yeah you know they they don't know the turret system they don't know anything about parallax adjustment so we take them to the range and we shoot okay so a guy buys a rifle he comes out and picks it up you want him to we want him to you ship you ship them out too but you want him to come and then tell me a little i've been to your range but tell tell the listeners about

your range a little bit well it's it's uh it's out of morgan about seven eight miles and uh just an awesome range it's uh on the back side of the wasatch front yeah yeah you know where the towers are there in farmington yeah just we're just uh south and and west of there a little bit but incredible range we got we got targets out to a mile wow yes we start at two and just go so how many yards is a mile that's 17 42 yeah exactly like that so have you shot a mile i have can you shoot accurate at a mile i can hit a 12 inch plate can you really is this with a 12 pound gun or what a gun i ordered that gun will do it just might take us a couple rounds you know but that's that's a long miles a long ways what caliber were you using 300 ultra mag were you kurt kurt hits it all the time but he's got a 338 kurt kurt and josh both wow yeah holy cow what's

funny is you shoot and you don't hear anything and you think you've missed it and then it hits it's crazy well it's pretty addicting you know and i think a lot of this long range stuff is is is there's ethics involved in everything and you can abuse everything and everything but absolutely if i feel like and i found this i found this like if if i feel like i can shoot 11 or 1200 and we were shooting jackrabbits at 1200 if i feel like i can do that these 600 yard shots are nothing that's and i've and have yet to miss at 600 yeah you know what i mean yeah and you don't want to say that lightly but that's really the truth it's the truth it's true it feels it's just like shooting a bow if these guys that are good at 100 yards or 120 yards it's not that they want to kill something at 120 but all of a sudden 70 and 60 and 50 and 40 yeah and and 30 are absolute chip shots yeah you

know it's true and so there's there's a lot of variables but you get more and more confident the more time you spend at long range yeah you know so well do you want to share any kind of a quick hunting story or one of your favorite hunting stories or hunting memories that's not a hard one so i was uh it was three years ago i was hunting with my bow in wyoming opening day and you know dusty nelson oh yeah him and his father yeah he was with us and my my hunting buddies his father-in-law but so we're we took the llamas and we're packed back in you know to a place where we go in region h in in wyoming and it's opening day and we see this buck that i saw the year before just 50 yards from where i saw him the last time you know just a different year yeah and uh you know so i got my bow and they're talking me into going over there he's a pretty nice deer you know he's got a kicker off

of his g4 and big fronts and real bladed backs you know like 187 inch deer he was a nice deer yeah so i make a stock on this deer it takes me two takes me two hours to get over to where he is and the wind was just the wind was blowing so hard there were pine cones just shooting across the canyon it was these so this deer he beds and i head over and you know how it is when you're going on a stock you think hell you know what's gonna happen you know and so i get over there and there were there were two little dead pine trees was where i wanted to get you know and dusty's filming this thing but i get over there and uh i don't see anything and i'm looking but i'm looking down below me further than i should have and i finally was patient for one time in my life i knelt down i knelt down i knelt down and i kind of got myself just if i had to shoot i could shoot you know and i

thought you know i'm just gonna sit here and about 40 minutes into it i actually see the tine of the deer by this rock to my left i saw his tine sticking out he was he was right below me he was he was probably 10 yards from me gee and so i sat there for like two more hours and this deer finally stands up and he started to walk away from me and for some reason you know it worked out in my favor he stopped and he walked back the other way i shot him at seven yards geez shot him at seven yards he went down just like you shot him with a rifle he just he just went on just just dropped done yeah just kicked around and that was that so that that was my most memorable hunt wow i mean i've had some good ones but that just don't happen very often no no it sure doesn't well that's awesome yeah well uh so

how can somebody get a hold of you guys how do they order a rifle what's your lead time our lead time right now we're about six seven months but if a guy has a hunt that he's you know we got guys got you know stone sheep hunts we try to get those rifles to them but yeah we're going along at a pretty good clip right now good good so and so and then how how can they get a hold of you can just redrock precision.com we got a gun builder on there okay and uh and actually you guys are redoing that gun builder for us right now but uh or they just just call us you know just visit with you just visit well and and you're happy to visit with guys you know even if they don't you know buy a rifle just visit about yeah i visit with guys all the time awesome yeah well can't tell you how much we appreciate you spending some time with us today um i know you guys are leaders in the industry i

can't wait to get my new rifle yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna crush some stuff this year that i promise so we're looking forward to that anyway really want to another shout out to under armor for sponsoring these podcasts what an awesome company they are as well very innovative build awesome gear for for hunters and uh anyway just appreciate them appreciate you talks thanks for spending some time with us thank you looking forward to continuing our partnership with epic outdoors all right buddy thank you thanks a lot